Carrier tactics aren't dead, but don't expect carriers to beat a balanced LRF/flak army in a straight fight.  You'll have to actually micro them heavily to get results now.  Late game you'll still often see huge swarms of bombers, though.

Good to know. Was afraid carriers were obsolete. Glad they just balanced them out

God damnit. I liked it when carriers were the main things in the game

Indeed; big companies have the excuse of corporate red tape, that every patch has to pass stringent QA even if it just tweaks unit stats.  Obviously those are policies established by people that have no understanding of multiplayer RTS and the need for small tweaking patches.  On the other hand, it's very true that even small changes can have catastrophic effects on game balance and that takes a lot of time to iron out.

I personally think the carrier changes were in the right direction, even if they did overnerf the carrier.  Now the task is to bring them back up to strength somehow.  I don't think rolling back the recent nerfs is the way to go; they added character to the carrier.  Instead, I think new strengths (or perhaps new weaknesses for the flak/lrf) are the way to go.